Grant Morrison's Batman, or, "HH"

Obviously I'm a big comic nerd. I have been forever, since my Dad would bring me tattered Silver Age issues from Thrift stores or gloomy 80's post-Miller nightmares from the local Shinder's (that was a comic and card chain that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore.)

I sort of fell off a few years ago, though.  In 2011, DC Comics (yes, I'm a DC guy first and foremost) relaunched their ENTIRE comic universe with the New 52, radically changing beloved character's origins, histories, and attitudes.  I chose the word radically, because it was a clear attempt by out of touch executives to make their "stodgy" classic characters like Superman TOTALLY RADICAL BROS!  They recruited a bunch of shitty, aging former Image creators (Image Comics is a whole post on its own) known for style over substance EVEN IN THE 90s and set them loose on Gotham and Metropolis.

And you got crap like this.

JOKER WILL BE SO MUCH MORE

XTREME WITH NO FACE, BRUH!!

I'm getting off track.  The point was, the world that I grew up reading about and loving changed.  And I hated it.  The weird thing was that this came right at the tail end of Grant Morrison's monumental 5 year run on Batman, a mad, brilliant, full throttle, completely insane, mind-f---ing celebration of all of Batman's continuity, all nearly a century of it.  And it almost seemed like a goodbye to that world I loved.

Look, everyone has their own interpretation of characters like Batman.  It drives my wife crazy, because she feels that there is no REAL version of that character.  I feel like Batman somehow does accommodate many different interpretations pretty well, but I certainly have my preferred version, and while Morrison's was not perfect for me, it's very close.

Look at me. Look--hey--look at me.

I'm Batman.

Morrison's Batman was almost superhumanly smart, an unstoppable intellect combined with unmatched will to combat big-idea threats.  He was driven by compassion and a desire to keep what happened to him from happening to anyone else, not by childish vengeance.  Morrison's Batman was scary because he was always 25 steps ahead of the guy who was 5 steps ahead.  This was a Batman who had a backup personality in case he was mind-wiped or attacked mentally, for gods sake! How cool is that?!  When Superman calls someone "the most dangerous man on Earth," you should probably listen, Protex.

If that IS your real name.

Rather than shy a way from the crazy, outlandish sci-fi era of Batman from the 50s and the camp of the 60s, like most modern Bat-writers, Morrison reasoned that all of these weird adventures happened, they just happened largely in his mind, as part of the "Black Casebook," a series of sensory deprivation experiments he participated in for the military. 

This embracing of stories that most modern batfans and writers were uncomfortable with, albeit through a modern lens, was unheard of and brilliant.  I loved that Morrison made it all work, and yeah, it was tweaked and reworked a little bit, but the idea that you didn't have to exclude the weirder parts of Batman's history was just so irresistible to me that I get excited just remembering reading it! I almost couldn't believe no one had thought of it before.

"Uh Oh."

A big theme of Morrison's run was death and the immortality of Batman as an IDEA.  "BATMAN AND ROBIN WILL NEVER DIE" as a rallying cry of hope and that some ideas are too big to crush.  Even when Bruce Wayne died for two years of his run, Morrison had former Robin Dick Grayson take up the mantle and become an upbeat, friendly Batman to a scowling, no-nonsense Robin in Damian, Bruce's son with Talia Al Ghul.  This reversal of the traditional dynamic was unexpected, well done, and most of all, fun. Honestly if there was even an out-of-continuity monthly book where Dick stayed Batman with Damian as Robin, I'd buy it religiously.

It was weird how Robin became a small 65 year old man.

Of course, eventually, Bruce came back, but asked Dick to stay in the cowl, and for awhile, there were TWO Batmen, and an entire team of allies in Batman, Inc.  When I heard this announced, to be honest, I thought it sounded stupid and yet, once again, Grant Morrison made it one of my favorite comics every month.  Giving obscure, forgotten characters and some new creations time to shine, he took the idea of Batman as a symbol and figure of inspiration to new heights, and made it a global force to be reckoned with. 

"TWO of them?  Well, there's a ONE of ME!"

It was in the middle of this high-concept book that the New 52 came crashing in, disrupting Morrison's obsessively plotted epic and forcing him to roll with it as best he could.  He managed to finish it in a satisfying way, with yet another threat vanquished, and a longtime foe seemingly dealt with for good (yeah, right) but I can't help feeling that the change had been a real problem for his plans.  The tiniest bit of enthusiasm was missing and the ending felt slightly arbitrary, too small for such a big run. 

I guess it may have been impossible to have an ending as epic as the rest of the run, after 5 years, anyone can run out of steam.  But I can't imagine having the rug you've built your entire tower of blocks on get pulled out from under you isn't frustrating. That the whole thing didn't collapse entirely is testament to just how good a writer Morrison is.

HOLY ERA THAT MOST BAT-WRITERS ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH, BATMAN!!

But as I said earlier, the whole thing in retrospect feels like a goodbye, a sendoff to the DC Comics I grew up loving, the Batman I grew up following.  Maybe Morrison sensed a change coming, and just didn't know the exact timing.  Maybe he straight up knew (though the whole New 52 seemed like a knee jerk surprise, given the reactions of many comic professionals.) Or maybe he just loved that character and his universe as much as the most rabid fan and wanted to pay the best tribute he could to an amazing, enduring character that's been around for almost 100 years and hopefully won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

I suspect not, after all, BATMAN AND ROBIN WILL NEVER DIE!

OMG THIS STILL GETS ME PUMPED UP